On Tue, 2 Dec 2003 01:50 am, Kim Davies wrote:
> Well, glue is required when a normal tree traversal could not otherwise
> resolve the domain. Apart from some corner cases, this is basically when
> the nameserver resides under the zone they are authoritative for.

Right, after all these years I think I finally "get it" about
what and where a glue record fits in.

> For example, if the NS for foo.com.au is ns1.foo.com.au, the IP address
> of ns1.foo.com.au can't be determined without looking up foo.com.au, and
> is thus unresolvable. This is fixed by putting "glue" - an A record in
> the com.au zone that stops resolves trying to descend down into
> foo.com.au.

So having our nameservers registered at NetSol has nothing to do
with making it so that the all important glue records for our NS
is correctly located and updated within the com.au database.

Can you elaborate on why "up until a few years ago" it seemed to
be the proper thing to do (as far as I know) to register *.com.au
nameservers with the InterNIC/NetSol ?

And what specific incident changed this so that it is no longer a
requirement ?

> If the nameservers sat in another zone outside of foo.com.au it would
> not be a problem. If you haed all your hundreds of zones being handled
> by ns1.bar.com.au, then you would just renumber ns1.bar.com.au and would
> not need to touch anything else.

So any domain registry that offers nameservice for it's client is
actually a better option than the client hosting their own name
servers within their own domain ?

So for our foobar.com.au domain it would be better NOT to use
ns1.foobar.com.au etc as our primary/secondary nameservers ?

One of our clients had a "sticky" NS record with T$ (telstra) that
would not change or go away no matter what we did or who we spoke
to, so I advised the client as a temporary measure to grab the *.org
equiv of their domain and we set that up just for two nameservers
for his own and other clients domains. I can see now that this might
be "the right way" to go and we should leave it this way.

> | Our NS records at InterNic/NetSol/whatever did require a specific
> | IP allocated to them but, for instance, godaddy.com does not.
>
> They don't. In non-glue scenarios, the IP addresses that NetSol requires
> is just thrown away.

Grrrr. Unbelievable.

> I never ends up in the com/net zones. That is why
> it is so puzzling that it is mandatory and the whole set of host hurdles
> within their system still exist.

And certainly little recourse for someone stuck in the middle of
this dilema to make a sane call on which way to go.

> If someone gets a reassigned IP address that used to belong to your
> pool, and tried to use it with NetSol's registrar system, they wouldnt
> be allowed to without going through a (tedious) reassignment process with
> you.

That is reassuring to know... that if I let these NS records go
then they (the IPs "locked" to our NS names) won't come back to
byte me in the future.

> For me, some things that appeared impossible from their website were fixed
> by calling their phone support line. If it frustrates you enough that might
> be your last resort.

Yes, I've experienced this once before on another matter with a
near 60 minute call to the US.

An update on this issue is that this morning I got an email from
NetSol saying they have now updated ONE of our 4 nameservers after
refusing to acknowledge they even existed for the last month !
A local AU whois lookup shows that this one nameservers IP has not
been updated yet, but an offshore lookup indeed shows the new IP.
 
Absolutely excellent reply Kim, thanks.

--markc